January in our False Bay garden

by Diana Studer

- gardening for biodiversity

in Cape Town, South Africa

We have two sorts of March lilies in our garden. The ones I found in Porterville which bloomed with joyful enthusiasm - a gift from Anna who gardened there before us and loves bulbs. (But the Porterville bulbs are sulking as they adjust)

The others were from our Camps Bay garden, and they longed for cool sea breezes when we lived in the Swartland, sulked and refused to bloom except in 2014. After two years of settling in, I have a first flower on Crinum moorei. Not March lilies, but Natal lilies!

Natal lily Crinum moorei from our Camps Bay garden

Thomas is an uncompromising minimalist in the garden. He favours a green Japanese look. No flowers. He smacked ALL the flowers off my Streptocarpus. Then he discovered the lily. I have built a defensive ring of pots around it, propped up the battered stem.

Thomas
the Flower Inspector patrolling for infractions

The lemon tree still has a residue of too much in the corner towards the house, where it once reached desperately to the light. Lemon by lemon I tidy the shape. I need to trim down the Plectranthus neochilus, which grows so high that fallen lemons disappear!

Lemon tree

I learn that garden bloggers tidy their patch for New Year. It has taken me a few weeks to work around our garden. Pruning shrubs and trees, and clearing the overgrown paths. Another week needed to trim back the octopus arms of the ivy walls.

Summer Gold path

The Ungardener has planted new legs and reattached the kitchen trellis. Granadilla vine and Senecio creeper grow day by day as we look out of the kitchen window - nicely filling that privacy gap between wall and our neighbour's roof. Edible banana gives us a tropical corner, with the leaves that intrude on my mountain view tied back by him, or chopped off by me!

Cornish Stripe and trellis

We get slices of sunset, this thru the bay window above the mountain - which yesterday was shrouded in drifts of sea fog, and sun, and cloud.

January sunset

There is colour in the garden, more obvious to me, than my camera. White Pelargonium, golden Hibiscus, clear yellow Hypoxis, white ivy-leaved and pink fragrant pelargoniums, sky blue Plumbago.

January flowers in yellow ...

Pelargonium in clear pink, salmon, raspberry, scarlet, crimson ...

January's red ish pelargoniums

Shell pink Abelia trumpets, deep azure Cape forget me not, blue butterflies of Rotheca, a lonely Agapanthus flower head, Septemberbossie (fending off Thomas' claws with their Here Be Dragons), kingfisher blue Felicia.

January flowers in blue ...

Cape Town's dams have dropped below 40% and in February water restrictions will be tighter. 'With dams running empty and less than 100 days of water stocks, many residents are informing on excessive use by their neighbours'. We are working on a grey water solution for our garden. We hope for autumn rain. Tuesday we had a grateful 3 millimetres of rain. We can expect poorer water quality as the dams empty, and rising food prices (since two thirds of our water goes to agricultural irrigation). The wider and long term view of CapeNature - it is strongly suggested that future water use per capita and water demand have to reduce.

Bauhinia leaves

Bauhinia leaves, difficult to capture their pair of butterfly wings, as they were folded shut against the afternoon heat, despite the fog and cloud coming and going all day. Green garden is good to see. Wonder how the garden will cope with the next two or so months?

For Through the garden gate with Sarah in Dorset
And Wildflower Wednesday with Gail at Clay and limestone (Proudly South African except the Hibiscus and Abelia)

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